Samantha Chaffin
Editor-in-Chief
Choosing a topic for my weekly editorial in “The Bengal” is always difficult for me.
It’s not difficult because I can’t think of anything to write about, but rather the opposite: there are tons of topics that I could and would love to share my view on, but very few that I feel are valuable for the student or faculty and staff population of ISU—my love of cats, for example.
That said, I had been racking my brain for days trying to figure out what to write about this week when a topic literally fell into my lap, or rather my inbox.
On Monday, March 16 just after 9:30 a.m., I received an email titled “Undergraduate Review of Graduation Application” from the graduation specialists in the Office of the Registrar here at ISU.
I won’t bore you with a direct quote of the full-text, but the basic idea of the email was that my major and minor departments were currently reviewing my graduation application in order to verify that I have met requirements for my degree, and I would be notified if there were any deficiencies or if my departments gave me the “OK” to graduate in May.
The concept is great—they’re going to triple check what I’ve already done and make sure I can graduate, except for one problem: I received this email in mid-March.
If any of my major or minor departments were to come back and say that I were missing courses or missing anything but a simple error on their end that could be easily rectified, there would be literally nothing I could do to fix it.
By mid-March, the add/drop date has passed, as has the withdrawal date for full-semester courses.
By mid-March, proactive soon-to-be-graduates are sending out rèsumès or graduate school applications. They are making plans regarding where they’re going to live and what they’re going to do after graduation, if they haven’t done so already.
While I am fairly confident that I have completed my degree requirements as I have checked them borderline-obsessively since I applied for graduation last July (yes, I said July), I am also confident that there may be students who haven’t and who were relying on the university to notify them if they applied for graduation and were denied.
If this email had been sent out in December to students who had been proactive and submitted their applications to graduate early, with results of the department checks by the first two weeks of school this spring, this would be wonderful.
An earlier notification would allow students missing a single class or two to possibly add those courses onto their load for their last semester so they could still move forward with plans they’ve made come May. It would also prevent students from pre-emptively applying to and accepting offers from employers, graduate schools or other opportunities that are only open to graduates.
As it stands, this email acts as a mere formality and likely only stresses students out (including myself) because they know if the results aren’t what they need, there’s not a thing that can be done except to take summer courses or return to classes in the fall to finish their degrees.
I understand that students have until March to apply for graduation, but those who apply early shouldn’t be punished for that by being forced to wait until last minute to get the final word.
